


The Space Between

by JU_Zumester



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Can be seen as romantic or platonic, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Roche, Rorschach Feels, although the intent was romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JU_Zumester/pseuds/JU_Zumester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel and Rorschach are both convinced that someone has invaded the Owl's Nest, but for different reasons. The results are atypical, to say the least. Who knew the Terror of the Underworld had bad dreams, too?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> Optional soundtrack:  
> \- [ Skylines and Turnstiles by My Chemical Romance ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymHYu5G5Ll8)
> 
> [Disclaimer: This fanwork may or may not contain spoilers and is subject to editing and improvement. Friendly feedback is appreciated.]

The murky waters between sleep and wakefulness are where you’re truly lost--without logic to back you up, and without your fists to protect you. Where dreams rule the land, and you’re left in the backwash of wherever your psyche happens to take you. And that's what you hate about dreams. There is no control. No magic button to press. No problem to solve. No gadget to use. Nobody at your back to protect you from the confusing spiral that follows.

In the fog of waking up, rational thought slips between your fingers, and it’s almost impossible to hold onto anything solid. It’s instinct that pulls you out of REM sleep and slides the thought to your conscious mind: Someone is in your house.

Your eyes flash open in the darkness. Squint in the general direction of the ceiling.

_No. No way. You’re just hearing things, Dan. No one’s in your h--_

There is the sound of a rattling doorknob. A door moving almost silently on it’s hinges, and then closing again. The leg of a chair scraping over linoleum. Floorboards squeaking.

_It’s just Rorschach. Stealing your damn food again. No big deal. Go back to sleep._

But it’s not Rorschach. Rorschach is a _vigilante detective_. It’s his job to be light on his feet. To be agile. He’s been in and out of your house dozens of times before (you know, because you’ve woken up to find food missing and chairs moved and cups and plates left in the sink too many times to count). But he’s never made enough noise to wake you up in the ungodly hours of the night. He's never given you a reason to catch him in the act.

His midnight escapades through your kitchen are like an unspoken ritual between you. He isn't noisy or rude about it, but it's obvious enough that he knows that you know--permission by omission. He doesn't mask his presence because he's ashamed of having to scavenge from your fridge (you think). He does it because you let him. Rorschach ransacks your house. Takes your food. Sometimes sleeps on the cot in the basement. And you let him. _That's just the way it goes_.

Something is wrong.

You throw your sheets back, take careful, silent steps across your bedroom. Tired eyes give the area a frantic once over, in search of something blunt and heavy that can be used to render a common burglar unconscious. The nagging thoughts itching at the back of your head whisper their worries: _You better hope this isn’t organized crime. You better hope nobody’s uncovered Nite Owl’s identity and come to take a cheap shot while you’re asleep._

Your gun is tucked away in a box downstairs. Unloaded. If this person ends up being armed, your chances aren’t great. I mean sure, being a mask with years of training and experience has its perks, but half asleep, without a weapon and without armor and without any of your fancy gadgetry to back you up? And alone? Still a bad situation.

Unable to find anything, you cautiously open your bedroom door, listening to the unmistakable sound of footsteps below. You advance through the hall and down the stairs slowly, keeping your back to the wall, all the while wishing you had night vision like your convenient masked counterpart. You’re berating yourself on just how stupid you are when a dark figure shows up at the bottom of the staircase.

What happens next is pure survival instinct, eating voraciously through any sense of facial recognition you might still have in the dim light. You throw yourself at the assailant with everything you've got. You’ve never been good at the whole “surprise attack” thing, but using the height advantage the stairs have given you, your weight is enough to force him to the ground.

“Thought you could,” you pin his wrists to the floor at his sides, “come into my house and,” dig your knees into his stomach, “get the best of me?!”

You scour the criminal’s face, searching for the vestiges of a fighting will. Wonder briefly whether you have any rope in the house to tie him up until the police arrive. Wonder, that is, until the adrenaline high begins to fade, and your eyes push through the fog of fatigue and focus in on the face underneath you; reveal shifting islands of ink on a white face...

“W...Wha...Fuck, _Rorschach_?” And now things _really_ don’t make sense. “What are you doing?”

It takes him a few seconds to answer and when he does, his voice sounds weighed down and thick. Disjointedly, you hope that you haven’t given him a concussion, but fuck, he scared the hell out of you and-- “Thought… Someone… Okay, Daniel? No one got into your house?”

“Only you, jackass…What the hell.” You want to sound mad, but any leftover anger drains from you rather quickly when you hear the tremors in Rorschach’s voice. “Really. I’m fine. Why?”

He takes even longer this time. “Had. Ennk. Premonitions. That you were in trouble.”

“Premonitions? What, a dream?”

His head tilts to the side, into deeper shadows, as though the mask isn’t enough cover for him. Almost as if the guy is _embarrassed_ \--

“You had a bad dream. That I was in trouble. Damn, man, I had no idea you were capable of…” He’s shaking under you, and in the same moment that you become aware just how close you are (aware of the fact that you’re _still on top of him_ ), you realize just how shaken up he looks. Suit jacket rumpled. Vest undone. Suspenders missing. Dress shirt buttoned unevenly, only half tucked in. His fedora has been tossed, forgotten, halfway across the living room. “Rorschach. It was just a dream. I’m okay.” You'd think that he was kidding, that this is all an extended practical joke, but Rorschach doesn't joke around. (He also doesn't come to you in the night, complaining of nightmares...)

“Hrmph.” He pushes you off of him. Scrambles to his feet with uncharacteristic haste, unsteady and more than a little off balance.

“Shit.” You move to steady him. “How hard did you hit your head? How’s your vision? Dizzy at all? Well, that much is apparent, I guess, but… Here, sit down.” He lets you guide him to the couch. You offer to take his trench coat but he doesn’t respond and that only worries you further. You retrieve his fedora from the living room floor and flip on the lights. Rorschach flinches. Settles deeper into the cushions, though no more relaxed.

You sigh and run a few fingers through your hair, trying to comb the stress out of yourself and not having much luck. Try to forget the fact that for a few minutes there, you were certain that a burglar/assassin/kidnapper had been in your house. “Okay. Okay. Um. Do you want to talk about it?” No reply. You study his frame, statuesque in the way he hides even the rise and fall of his chest. Rorschach could be dead under there and you’d never know. “Alright. Of course you don’t.”  
  
You’re not exactly sure what to say. “Well, plot twist, I’m not being attacked. You can go home now,” doesn’t exactly have a pleasant ring to it. And you don’t want him to leave. Not after hearing the break of his voice, and feeling how close he’d been to snapping, even with you there, on top of him, living proof that you were okay and that his dream had been a lie. Certainly not when you suspect that you may have given him a head injury.

_Let’s focus on the head injury part._

“Okay, c’mon, buddy. Mask up. I need to check your eyes. Make sure you don’t have a concussion under there.”

“Mm.”

“Come on. I want it off.” You’ve seen his face before. But only in emergency situations. Only when keeping the mask on had been a direct threat to health (once when he’d needed stitches in the back of the head, again when he’d been poisoned and collapsed on the floor of the Owl’s Nest). And even then, he’d resisted, kept his face angled as far away from you as he could, taken his mask back as soon as he possible, and you don’t expect him to be compliant now, but for some reason--by some strange miracle, or perhaps as an omen of the end--he doesn’t fight you. He lifts silent fingers to the latex bunched around his throat and peels it back, over his chin, past the bridge of his nose, and completely off his head. Folds it carefully and places it in his lap. Reverent. And that’s the only part of this that’s in character for him at all.

You stare at the man as though he’s been replaced by a wax dummy. His eyes are red. Swollen. And if you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d been crying. But Rorschach doesn't cry. Right? He's above that. Above nightmares. Above fear. Above walking miles in the dark, breaking into his partner's home, searching frantically for signs of a struggle, needing to see him alive, to confirm that it was all just a trick of his subconscious mind, unable to reason with the demons of the night. Rorschach doesn't do that.

The couch creaks softly as you sit down next to him and turn his chin towards you, into the light. His pupils wander, as though they’re having trouble focusing in on any one thing. You can't tell whether that's sleep deprivation or anxiety or evidence of blunt force trauma to the head. Maybe all three. His eyes are puffy, his breath ragged, rings lining the undersides of his eyes, and you’re almost certain at this point that he’s been crying, but that makes no sense, it was just a dream--

Rorschach doesn’t cry. And if he does, he _definitely_ doesn’t show it. He shouldn’t have let you strip him of his mask like that, he shouldn’t be sitting here in the cage of your touch, submitting to you, it’s not right, it’s--

You want to tell him that it’s going to be okay. You should be asking him questions, checking for signs of altered consciousness, for the symptoms of head injury. Instead, all you can say is, “Tell me. What your dream was about.”

He blinks rapidly. Trying to hide the evidence of tears long since dried--uselessly, because you’ve already seen, and he knows it. “Should be checking for concussion, Daniel.”

“I am.” Your eyes linger on him, and he burns under the scrutiny like a vampire in the sun. Doesn't question your blatant lie.

It’s almost a minute before he speaks. “Brothel. Human trafficking ring. You took them down. Nn... But they found out who you were. Don’t know how. But.” He swallows, and each word is hard for him. Each is forged from some fire raging deep within him and it looks like it hurts on the way out, struggles to escape, dies in the following silence, saved only in memory, only by the two of you in this moment. “But they found out, and they. Nk... They got to you. Broke in. Blocked your exit routes. Didn’t let you reach the basement. Couldn’t get to Archie. Escape--” He chokes on his words. Tenses.

You find yourself reaching out to him. Settling into your place by his side, fingers idly running up and down his arm. You’re too focused on his face, illuminated by pallid moonlight, to care. If he notices, he doesn’t show it. You wait for him to continue, knowing that no amount of poking and prodding will get the words out faster.

“Put up a valiant fight. Just too. Too many of them. Did.” His fists clench and unclench. The noise made by shifting leather and your rhythmic puffs of breath are the only sounds between his words, choppy and disorganized. Rorschach, who is usually so eloquent and so careful in what he says, is reduced to broken sentence fragments and intangible frustration. “Did terrible things. To your...Nk. No humanity. Didn’t get to you in time. Found you. In bedroom. Blood strewn everywhere to clot and cool. Bits of you. Ruined. Purity. Ruined. All. Hnn. Nk. All. _All_ \--” The expression on his face begs you to make him stop, and you’re not sure he can, on his own.

So you grab his hand, squeeze it, and it’s enough to jerk him out of his daze. “Stay. It’s late, and it’s clear that we both need some sleep. You can take the guest bedroom. Okay?” You search his face. “Please?”

He gives you the briefest of nods. Doesn’t look at you directly. Eyes bore into the wall, unfocused. And your thoughts stray to places they shouldn’t be (holding him close, wrapping tender arms around him, whispering soothing things, running a hand over his hair, feeling his heartbeat against yours, and where all these thoughts coming from?) and you try to ignore them by filling the empty air with hasty words. “Look. Whatever you’re thinking right now… What happened wasn’t your fault. It was just a nightmare. Nothing like that has happened, or is going to happen. Nobody is going to uncover my identity. No one is going to invade my house. And even if they did, I’d take care of myself. I’d find a way. And you’d be there with me. And even if you weren’t, and things went downhill, it _wouldn’t be your fault_. Understand? What twisted people do to me, or attempt to do to me, or want to do to me will never be your fault. We lead dangerous lives. We knew that going in.”

“Have your back--”  
  
“You do your best to have my back. And I do my best to have yours. But neither of us can be all powerful, all knowing, in all places at once. We--We’re human. We make mistakes. That’s life. Not something that needs to be apologized for, or laid blame upon.” And your hand has somehow migrated to his chest, and you are so close. And you’re suddenly very aware of a heat rising to your cheeks and you want to pull away but you can feel the change in Rorschach as he slowly comes back to himself, his eyes focusing in on the floor, and then the couch, and then you. Grounded by your touch.

And he’s not pushing you away. Or standing up. Or warning about the dangers of intimacy. Of complacency.

His eyelids droop, head tipping forward. And it’s such a rare site (such an odd thing, for Rorschach of all people to let his guard down far enough to fall asleep in front of another person, much less in their arms) that you can’t take your eyes off of him any more than you could before. It's obvious that he's been neglecting himself, kept awake by restless nights or work or maybe noisy neighbors or paranoia--and that this has probably been a long time coming. And knowing Rorschach's stubbornness, he's probably been half-asleep on his feet since the night began.

His head jerks up suddenly. He searches the room, briefly panicked. And you move your hand in gentle circles over his chest. Lulling him back to sleep. Tugging him under rolling waves of unconsciousness. His line of vision wanders in your direction briefly before his head droops forward again, his eyes close; after a few more starts, they stop trying to open. And he’s asleep. And you’re pressed up to his side, and even through the layers of his uniform and your pajamas and his deep slumber, you’re sure that he can feel the beating of your heart because you’re reasonably concerned that it’s going to leap right out of your chest. And it's only because this is all so strange and new and…

And then it’s your eyes that are starting to close. And you don’t want to fight it. Because there’s something warm and happy inside of you, just being there by his side, and knowing that he’s getting long awaited rest (rest that he so clearly needs, judging by the dark shadows under his eyes and the tremors in his hands). He’s here and safe and you’re here and safe and all is right with the world, for these tenuous few seconds, at least. It's an uncommon gift, for someone who leads a life as chaotic as yours.

And in the throws of predawn, you slump noiselessly against his side and drift once again into the murky waters between wakefulness and sleep.

The world goes dark. The last sensations your groggy mind registers are the warmth you share and the hum of Rorschach’s breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [ this ](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/131572274483/equilibrium-nancy-drewned-nickerson) prompt, found at otpprompts.tumblr.com.


End file.
